What The Heck Is Executive Coaching

“What the heck is executive coaching?” I get asked that question many times a day.

I admit that coaching is a nebulous term. When I say that I’m a certified coach, people ask if I coach sports teams. When I say that I actually coach work teams, people look surprised. ‘Why would a work team need coaching?’ they ask. Because work teams are just like sports teams:

• They are made up of different people who try to reach a team goal together.
• Each person on the team has two types of goals in mind: individual goals and team goals.
• Every team member has his/her own communication style, which may or may not work well with the others on the team.
• Although there is one official leader (the coach or captain), there are usually other team members who carry as much weight, if not more weight, than the official leader.

Similar to a sports team, thriving work teams need an ‘outsider’ to coach them to success, whether the whole team or just some of the team leaders. That’s what CHCI does. We coach teams and leaders to get from Point A to Point B, in the most effective way possible.

During the years, many people have asked for a practical book on coaching, so they can bring coaching skills to their own teams. That’s how Anne Loehr’s book, “A Manager’s Guide to Coaching” was created. Here is an excellent write up about one of the book topics: How to create effective coaching questions. Enjoy!

Let’s share experiences. Leave a comment below, send me an email, or find me on Twitter.

Conflict in the Workplace? 7 Ways to Resolve It

Crucial conversation sounds like a serious life or death conversation. It’s not. Instead, it’s a concept pioneered by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler that describes a conversation between two or more people where the stakes are high, opinions vary, and emotions run strong.
We tend to avoid crucial conversations at work. However, it’s important to learn how to handle them productively. There are seven steps to creating a successful crucial conversation:

1. Start with the heart
2. Master your story
3. Learn to look
4. Make it safe
5. State your path
6. Explore the other’s path
7. Move to action

1. Start with the heart: During the crucial conversation, start with the heart. Why are you having this conversation? Because you’re angry and want to prove your point? Or because you want to improve your working relationship? Focus on healthy goals like learning, finding the truth, and strengthening relationships.

2. Master your story:When managing crucial conversations, stick to concrete facts and avoid judgements about those facts. Instead of saying, “You’re late, again.”, try saying “This is the 3^rd time you’ve been late in 3 weeks. What’s causing these delays?”

3. Learn to look:Look at your role in the situation before accusing the other person. How have you contributed to the problem and how can you improve it?

4. Make it safe:While engaging in crucial conversations, create safety which includes being fully present without distractions and avoiding dangerous phrases, such as “You always do this.” or “You never do that”.

5. State your path:Create a culture where asking for help is encouraged. State how you’d like the issue to be resolved and ask for help in finding that solution.

6. Explore the other’s path:Now it’s time to listen and hear what the other person wants. Looking at the other person’s perspective calms the conversation and helps move the discussion in the right direction.

7. Move to action:Moving to action plays a significant role in crucial conversation. What action steps have you both agreed to and how will you ensure those steps take root?

With practice, a crucial conversation can be simple and bring a positive outcome. Keep these three tips in mind:

1. Adjust your mindset

Gearing up for a crucial conversation can create anxiety. Instead of getting nervous, try to adjust your mindset to be more positive. A crucial conversation goes best when you think of it as a normal conversation in a normal day.
These types of conversations could trigger strained working relationships within the organization. To avoid the painful effect, be compassionate with yourself and the other person. No one is perfect so be gracious with those around you.

2. Listen

Listening actively before responding to the other person can often give you enough time to choose the right words. By doing so, you can address the right issues leading to fruitful conversations.
During the crucial conversation, listen deeply with an open mind. While listening to the other person’s points of view, you will get to know their needs and requirements.
After listening, acknowledge the other’s viewpoint. Expressing interest in understanding the other’s point of view helps clarify the difference between the perspectives.

The best way to listen in a crucial conversations is to keep yourself calm and relaxed. Don’t just rush into things. To keep yourself calm, try to take regular breaths and relax your mind. A relaxed mind helps you refocus, providing the capacity to absorb any blows coming your way.

3. Plan

Planning is an essential aspect of crucial conversations so make sure to understand all the factors related to your crucial conversation. Being prepared in advance helps you hold a simple, clear, balanced and direct conversation. Bringing a few notes is one technique; you could also role play with another colleague before the actual crucial conversation.

Ready to improve your crucial conversation skills? Start by asking for feedback on your ability to handle stressful situations, which will help identify your areas of improvement. Then practice, practice, practice. Practice makes crucial conversations substantially more relaxed and less daunting!
Want to learn more about crucial conversations?

Let’s share experiences. Leave a comment below, send me an email, or find me on Twitter.

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To Be a Great Leader You Have to Listen

Two skills make up the backbone of coaching: listening and asking questions. Today we are going to focus on listening.

Often leaders and managers under develop their listening skills. Why? For one, they aren’t taught how to truly listen. Second, leaders are expected to have all the answers. And third, it’s physiologically hard to listen.

The human mouth plods along at 125 words per minute, while a neuron in the brain can fire about 200 times a second. No wonder our mind wanders when there’s so much time in between the words of a conversation! This is part of the reason why we remember only 25% to 50% of what we hear.

Plus, when we are talking, we get a rush of chemicals sent to our reward and pleasure centers. There is no such reward for listening. When you listen, you are halting your natural ways of thinking. It is like holding your breath. When you practice listening, it’s a fitness test for the brain.

And don’t forget about the fact that feelings, assumptions and anxieties tend to dominate much of our attention while communicating, which makes it difficult to concentrate on what others are saying.

The good news is that listening skills can be learned and improved. While leaders can be coached in listening skills, it’s also important for managers who want to coach their team to master the art of listening. In other words, it’s a fundamental aspect to coaching no matter which side of the equation you’re on.

Why Listen?

Why bother? If you’re not listening at work, it’s easier to misinterpret a discussion as a decision. You may underestimate the importance of objections and ambivalence. And not listening is a quick way to dissolve trust between leaders and their teams.

Many of the reasons people choose to be better listeners include:

• Increase their emotional intelligence
• Gain more trust and influence with others
• Better understand their client’s and customer’s needs, in order to innovate ways to meet those needs
• Have people experience what it is like to be completely heard and understood
• Build respect, and to learn from others

Being a better listener takes effort and a strategy. Much like any sport, you will want to learn the steps, and then practice, practice, practice. Your coach will help you do this, but you can also practice on your own. 

Master Active Listening

The first thing to master is called active listening. What is it? There are five parts of communication—what’s said, what’s not said, words, tone of voice, and body language. Here’s an interesting article on the language of leadership.

Active listening is the process of fully attending to all parts of someone’s communication.

To improve your active listening skills, practice these three steps: 1) Focus on yourself, 2) focus on the other person, and 3) focus on the environment.

Here are some tips:

Three Steps to Improve Your Active Listening Skills

1. Focus on Yourself

• Quiet your own thoughts and emotions
• Make eye contact with the speaker (it will help you concentrate on them)
• Mentally restate what you’re hearing them say
• If you miss anything, or something seems unclear, ask them to repeat it

 2. Focus on the Other Person

• Make eye contact with the speaker (to let them know you’re listening)
• Make appropriate reactions and sounds
• When they’re done, repeat what you heard out loud
• Do this until you’ve clearly heard what they were trying to say

3. Focus on the Environment

• What do you hear? (Restlessness? Calm?)
• What do you see? (Head-nodding? Phone use? Taking notes?)
• What does your emotional intelligence say? (They’re losing interest? They like this idea!)

Next time you’re in a meeting, glance around. Is what you are hearing different than what you are seeing? Is what you are seeing different from what you are feeling?

Practice each step of listening until you feel you’ve mastered all three. Ask a few nonbiased people if they perceive you as a strong listener. Then actively listen to their responses! Active listening will greatly improve your coaching, and will benefit all of your relationships—inside or outside the workplace.

There are also things you can do day-to-day to improve your listening skills. Read over these tips on a regular basis until they are set in your mind.

Day-To-Day Listening Practices

To improve your listening, DO:

• Be 100% present. This means turning off all electronics, and keep your eyes on the person.
• Be content to listen and to stay in the conversation until the person feels like they are fully heard.
• Ask questions and take notes, including word clarification. Many words in the English language have more than one meaning, or can vary drastically (such as the word “soon”).
• Show engagement in your posture and your tone of voice by leaning into the conversation, and keeping your voice level.

To improve your listening, DON’T:

• React emotionally. Stay calm and focused on the other person.
• Offer suggestions or advice. This is a hard one! Yet if you are truly listening, all you’re doing is pulling information out. As soon as you start suggesting solutions, you are no longer listening.
• Talk about yourself. Even if you have had the same experience, don’t tell your story. It takes the attention off the person and back onto you. A simple “I have been there” can do the trick.
• Look at anything but the person. Stay focused on the person’s eyes, facial expressions, and body language.

It can’t be stressed enough just how important listening skills are for coaching. Whether you invest in building your listening skills by working with a coach, or commit to practicing yourself, it will be well worth your while. Paired with a strong grasp on how to ask the right questions in a coaching environment, which you can review here, you are well on your way to using coaching as a tool to enhance your impact as a leader.

How to Train Your Staff With A Decreasing Budget

In our last blog, How to Use the 70/20/10 Model to Develop Careers, we discussed the “what”, “when” and “how” of using the 70/20/10 Adult Learning Model for employee development. Now let’s discuss the “why”.

Managers face daily decisions to ensure their team gets what’s needed for success. But with budgets getting smaller, it’s hard to stretch resources. After reading this blog, you will learn several tips on how to stretch your training budget, spend wisely, plan strategically and still meet your employee development goals.

The “Why” to Employee Development

What is the return on investment (ROI) for a manager who wants to allocate time and financial resources for her employees? Simply put: a better prepared employee is a more productive employee. According to the Association of Talent Development (ATD), companies that invest in training employees see a 218% higher income per employee than companies that don’t. The 70/20/10 model for employee development is one effective tool to leverage the current talents of your staff and build stronger teams, which increases the organizational bottom line.

We know that the manager cannot motivate an employee to improve; that has come from within the employee. However, managers can create a learning environment for them to grow. How? The first step is to take an inventory of the current staff, using a consistent assessment tool such as a 360-degree assessment, with an objective lens to collect skills data. This full assessment will provide two sets of data in one assessment: strengths and areas to grow. By selecting the right 360 tool, you can complete two tasks at once for the same price, creating cost savings for your budget. This 360 view lets managers begin to leverage the strengths in their staff that can be shared with other employees; it also shows the delta between the strengths and weaknesses, so you can create the best strategy to decrease the weaknesses of the entire team.

Why Are Employees Leaving Your Organization?

In our daily lives, we use personal biases, intuitions, and gut feelings to make our decisions. And that’s perfectly fine. They serve us well in many ways.

However, when it comes to improving work performances, personal biases, intuitions, and gut feelings just don’t cut it.

Data can improve your own, your team’s, and your organization’s performance; people analytics can help. People analytics is the data that identifies workforce patterns and trends. Here are some questions that can be answered with people analytics:

• How engaged are our employees?
• What skills does my organization need to invest in, to achieve our mission?
• Why are my employees leaving the organization?

These questions and many more are the kinds of questions that people analytics can answer. Even if you don’t regularly use data in your job, you can still learn a lot with people analytics, regardless of your supervisory level.

A brief primer on people analytics

Before we answer why employees are leaving your organization, let’s start by defining a few terms:

Data are facts, statistics, or other items of information. Data are all around us; you just have to know how to look for it, compile it, and make sense of it. We can use data to understand problems and processes at a micro-level (between individuals), at a mezzo-level (team-level), or at a macro level (organizational level).

So who uses data?

One group of people who use data are data analysts. Data analysts organize, examine, analyze and use data to draw meaning. They tend to focus on understanding previous events to describe things that have already happened.

How to Break the Glass Ceiling

Panelists at the IREM Global Summit share best practices for mitigating bias and advancing diversity.

Cultivating talent is the industry-wide mission for the property management profession and all of the commercial real estate. At the Institute of Real Estate Management’s Global Summit last week in San Francisco, an international panel of rising leaders shared best practices and strategies for advancing that goal through diversity.

Signs of progress for women in real estate stand side by side with persistent contradictions. Women entrepreneurs enjoy a rising profile; nearly one-third of all privately held firms are owned by women. On the educational front, women bring more to the table; they hold more undergraduate degrees than men and earn 50 percent more graduate degrees than their male counterparts. Women’s workplace priorities are led by flexibility and quality of life, according to national studies; compensation ranks third.

The speakers also recounted the qualities that women in business tend to bring to the table. “The more diversity, the better your product is going to be, the better your bottom line is going to be,” noted Anne Loehr, executive vice president at the Center for Human Capital Innovation and the panel’s moderator.

Eight Ways to Improve People Processes in Your Organization

People are a critical part of every organization’s balance sheet. Investments related to acquiring, retaining, developing, and inspiring employees are critical to your organization’s success, requiring a thoughtful strategy to build and maintain a productive workforce.

CHCI’s talent life cycle, called PRIDALRM, refers to the interrelated strategies that support the most important assets of an organization – the people. Most of the activities that occur within an organization’s human resources, human capital, and talent management divisions can be distilled to one of the eight components highlighted in the PRIDALRM image. 

CHCI uses PRIDALRM to diagnose problem areas and develop targeted remediation efforts. This systematic approach to organizational performance encourages the interconnection among elements and alignment to outcomes. Let’s review the eight components.

Starting with the “north star” of the talent life cycle, the workforce PLAN sets up a framework that allows organizations to address current needs and identify future opportunities and threats. It helps answer the following questions:

• Does the organization’s workforce have the right capabilities today?
• What resources will the organization need to be successful in five years?
• How can our human capital approach give us a competitive advantage in our industry?

The next component, RECRUIT, is about talent acquisition. Talent acquisition is the organizational process which fills current and future positions and manages the transition of new employees to becoming fully productive. According to research commissioned by Glassdoor, 95% of companies admit to hiring the wrong people every year.  In fact, Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) identified that the cost of a bad hire could be up to five times the amount of a bad hire’s annual salary; so hiring the wrong person is a costly mistake. Here are three categories of questions to ask candidates at the initial hiring process to help determine if candidates are a good fit in your organization: